


Sorry (Seems to Be) The Hardest Word

by Pollydoodles



Series: The Wider Pizza-Verse [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was the first to appear, of course, shuffling awkwardly through the sliding glass doors of Jane’s lab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorry (Seems to Be) The Hardest Word

Steve was the first to appear, of course, shuffling awkwardly through the sliding glass doors of Jane’s lab. Jane, for her part, gave him a side-long glance and then threw the same to Darcy, before announcing loudly – and unnecessarily – that she needed to go ask Banner something. 

Darcy rolled her eyes as Jane disappeared, white coat flapping as the other woman made good her escape. She’d heard all about the previous night, obviously. Actually, hadn’t needed to, given that it had been all over the news channels. Pepper had managed to spin it, without ever actually saying so, that there had been some suspected terror threat which had needed urgent attention. 

Yes, Captain America was always ready to do his duty, no matter the time or day. 

Yes, Tony Stark had – she choked on that one before answering, but recovered, gamely – selflessly given up his night at the Metropolitan Opera to race to the Captain’s aid. 

The man with the iron arm providing cover for Captain America? New recruit. Why the question? 

Yes, the young woman leaving the restaurant with the Captain and the mysterious soldier does work with Dr. Jane Foster. 

No, that’s not an appropriate question. End of press call. 

Steve was trying to make himself look as small as possible, head dropped to his chest and giving her better puppy dog eyes than she’d seen even on Lucky. He’d brought her Starbucks and pushed it slowly across the table towards her, careful not to use force. He remembered the fallout when Sam had slid one, western-bar style, across the counter at her. She’d missed it, cup hitting the side of her laptop and spilling its boiling hot contents over the keyboard in its entirety. 

She’d told Steve later, through gritted teeth, that actually it wasn’t the liquid that had done the damage, but the sugar. Got right into the keys and then the electronics and stopped everything from working. She’d taken the whole thing apart, what seemed like hundreds of little black keys spread over the coffee table and what she’d advised him was something called the motherboard on her lap. One of Stark’s soldering irons in hand, she’d attempted CPR – computer preservation rites, she told him solemnly – to no avail. 

The keys had ended up in Sam’s bed, tucked neatly and spread out under the fitted sheet so it took him a while – and some sleepless nights – to work out whether he’d managed to get them all, and she’d nailed the motherboard to his door, along with a print-out webpage of the replacement she expected him to buy. 

All in all, not worth it. Especially when he was already in the doghouse. 

“Darcy, I-“ He began seriously, having memorised an entire speech earlier that morning, rehearsing it whilst pacing up and down his apartment, Bucky looking on in interest. 

“Don’t worry, Steve.” She cut across him, and he looked pained. “Honestly.” She smiled up at him before taking a sip from the coffee he’d brought. “I know you misunderstood and, I also know, you were only trying to protect me. Next time I have an awful date, at least I know there’s a Def Con Five option as well, huh? How many girls can say that?”

“Well, I was kind of thinking, maybe, that there wouldn’t be any more awful dates, Darce,” He said hopefully, aware he was on dodgy ground and seriously pushing his luck. Her jaw tightened slightly and her eyes dropped from his face before he’d finished. “I mean, there’s Bu-“

“Don’t push it, Rogers.” She said quietly, and kept her head down so that he couldn’t see her biting her lip hard after she’d spoken. She tapped at the keys blindly and was grateful that he was on the other side of the table where he couldn’t see the random sting of letters she’d just composed to make herself look busy. The captain inhaled deeply, and then opted to quit whilst the going was good. Before leaving, however, he’d crowded into her space and enveloped her into a one-armed hug, crushing her warmly to his chest. 

Pepper was next; fruit basket in hand and a deeply apologetic look pasted across her face. 

“You know I’m not a small business, right?” Darcy said, taking it from her anyway. 

“You know I’m not to be held fully accountable for the actions of Anthony Stark, right?” Pepper responded, and Darcy laughed. 

“Sorry about the opera.” Darcy unwrapped the cellophane and pulled out a nectarine. She gestured with it to Pepper, who smiled and waved a polite no. Darcy shrugged and bit into it. 

“Actually, leaving aside the resultant press conferences and the round-the-clock monitors we’ve had to put on all social media platforms, it’s a better night out without him there.” Pepper admitted. Darcy grinned at her around the nectarine. “He fidgets.” Pepper confided. 

Pausing briefly on her way out, she laid a gentle hand on Darcy’s shoulder and squeezed. Darcy, face still full of fruit to be able to respond verbally, groaned on the inside. She really didn’t need everyone having an opinion on her love life. Or lack thereof. Not if she wasn’t going to profit from it, at any rate. 

Next, confusingly, was Barton. 

“You weren’t even there.” Darcy said flatly as he perched himself on the end of her table and stole the remains of her coffee. At least the fruit was safe. 

“How’d you know? S’not like I need to be up close to work.” He winked at her and she rolled her eyes. 

“I know because I got you reservations at that restaurant you like, and you don’t pass up food for anyone.” She snapped back and threw an orange at his head. He caught it easily and began unpeeling it, dropping the skin all over her desk. She sighed. Bad move, Darce, bad move. 

“Okay, you got me.” Barton shoved three segments into it mouth at once. Mumbling around them awkwardly and juice running down his chin as he spoke, he continued. “So how comes Rogers & Barnes were in full-on tag-team mode anyway? I saw the gear Barnes was packing, that’s some serious arsenal.”

Darcy schooled her features into her best poker face and shrugged nonchalantly. “You know they’re not exactly modernised, Barton. Steve just misunderstood a text he should never have gotten anyway.” She added yet more nonsensical type to the document she’d been editing for Jane, and hoped she’d remember later to take it out before posting it. 

The man fixed her with a calculating look, and she got the impression it was much the same as the look he’d get when scoping a target to ensure he hit dead centre. 

“Yeah, about that. I’ve been reading this pysch book Nat gave me-“

“Reading, Barton, really?” Darcy interrupted. “Didn’t realise you could.”

He threw her a dirty look before continuing. “And it says that there’s no real coincidences. That when people slip up and say something they reckon they didn’t mean, or, oh, I don’t know – send a text to the wrong person-“ He eyed her meaningfully and she flushed slightly. “It’s actually what they meant to do in the first place. Just that their conscious mind won’t let them admit to it.”

There was a pregnant pause in the air between them. 

“You’re talking about a Freudian Slip and what you’re also doing is putting stock in a guy who sincerely believed that all men want to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers. What does that say about your conscious mind, Barton?”

Darcy blinked and instantly decided that she really needed to give Jane more credit. The other woman stood at Darcy’s shoulder, looking over at Darcy’s laptop screen – filled with unintelligible lettering and the odd punctuation mark – as though it were the most interesting thing in the room. Her words, spoken not in anger, hung in the air and she ignored them almost as soon as they’d left her mouth. 

Barton huffed and slipped from the desk, knowing, at least, when he was beaten. 

Darcy whispered a grateful thank you into Jane’s ear and the boss lady bumped her shoulder with her own in response. Moving back to her own table, she paused and looked back at Darcy. “Anytime. But you know you really need to sort yourself out.”

Darcy gave her a confused look and knew that Jane wasn’t buying it any more than she would, had the roles been reversed. They managed another hour uninterrupted, and Darcy rearranged her work into something that actually read in English rather than wingdings. 

The final person to appear was the least expected. 

“I’m not sorry at all.” 

Darcy looked up with a sigh and Stark looked back at her, grinning widely. “Then why are you even here?” She said, unable to muster any fire to go along with the words. 

“Pepper made me.” He parked himself on her desk right next to the laptop and removed any possibility of her pretending to work whilst he made whatever point he’d come down to make. 

“And it never occurred to you to not do it and just say that you did?”

“Lewis, you wound me.” He said dramatically, clasping his hands over his heart. “As if I would ever go against a direct request from Pepper.” Darcy rolled her eyes at that one, unable to hold back. 

“I think you mean direct order.” She snorted, looking up at him. 

“Semantics.” He slipped from the table and crowded into her space, pushing the laptop lid back to better angle the screen. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

“Nothing you find remotely interesting. Why are you here?”

“Not true.” He did sound as though he were genuinely hurt. “Astrophysics might not be my major but I retain a healthy respects for all forms of science.” He looked at her from the corner of his eye and winked slyly. “Even poli-sci.” She shoved his shoulder and he laughed. 

“One last time, Stark, why-“

“Just wondering when you were gonna sort it out.” He said idly, crossing to the next desk and fiddling with the apparatus Jane had carefully set up. Darcy took a steadying breath and opted once more for total denial in the face of adversity. 

“Sort out what?” She said lightly, uncaringly even, as she returned her gaze to the laptop screen, staring at it with what she hoped would appear to anyone else looking on to be a total concentration. She was actually focusing so hard on it that the words swam in front of her face in a fuzzy dance of derision at her poor acting skills. 

“You know…” He picked up a test tube and shook it. “The thing.”

“The thing … The thing. What thing?” Darcy feigned ignorance, hoping against hope she was wrong about what he was trying to get at. 

Stark spun on his heel and fixed her with a stern look. Darcy felt a small bead of sweat roll from the back of her neck, under her shirt and down her back. She shifted uncomfortably. Were the lights in the lab always that bright? Was this some kind of torture technique that Stark had picked up? Had he increased the temperature when he came in without her noticing?

She resisted the urge to pull her collar away from her neck, cartoon style. 

“The party, obviously.” 

Darcy’s jaw dropped open against her will and she snapped it back shut instantly. “Party?”

He grinned at her. Grinned like a goddamned shark. “Yeah, you were going on about it a couple of months ago, some kind of shindig, I don’t know. Seemed to drop off your radar recently… Guess you’ve been preoccupied?” Darcy ignored the more obvious jab. 

“Mmmmm.” She responded. “Work’s been pretty busy. But I can throw a party. I can totally throw a party. Who doesn’t like a party?” She was babbling and she was aware she was babbling. Stark, thankfully, dropped the test tube he’d been shaking back into its rack and sauntered towards the exit, pausing only to pat Darcy on the head as he passed her. 

*****

“She’s on the ropes. Got her exactly where I want her.” Stark said gleefully to Barton over coffee in the common room kitchen. “Just leave it with me.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder and slid off the stool, still hanging onto his coffee cup. 

Bucky appeared in the doorway as Tony approached it to leave, and Stark threw the other man a wide grin. “Looking for your girlfriend, huh? She’s in the lab. Pretty sure she’s missing you.”

He winked at Bucky who stared, eyes wide, and kept staring long after Tony’s back had disappeared from view. 

Girlfriend?


End file.
